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Tritonicula wellsi
Photo by Hans Bertsch, Galeta Marine Laboratory, Panama, 3 September 1974
Tritonicula wellsi (Er. Marcus, 1961)
“In life, inner organs orange or salmon, showing through body wall; gills translucent whitish. Back and sides smooth; hind end tapers. Genital papilla broad, under second or third branchial tuft; anus near fourth. Veil small, not bilobed, with six appendages, the two outermost of which are spoon-shaped tentacles. Rhinophorial sheaths high with smooth borders....Fully developed branchiae of rather uniform size and simply ramified” (Marcus, 1971: 146). Living animal reaches about 10 mm in total length.
The animal has been reported throughout the western Atlantic and Caribbean, from North Carolina and Florida, and south to Belize, Honduras, Costa Rica, the Virgin Islands, Panama (individuals illustrated here), St. Maarten/St. Martin, and Brazil (Valdés et al., 2006).
This species occurs on the colorful sea whip, Leptogorgia virgulata (Lamarck, 1815); its arborescent gills resemble the polyps of its biohabitat. Its coiled egg mass is laid on its host.
Originally named in the genus Tritonia, this species has been moved to the genus Tritonicula along with a number of other Caribbean (and one Pacific) species; all are characterized by small numbers of radular teeth, only up to 11 per half row (Korshunova & Martynov, 2020).
This eponym is named in honor of the malacologist Harry W. Wells, who collected the holotype at the Duke University Marine Laboratory at Beaufort, South Carolina. Dr. Wells (1930-1973) published ecological and taxonomic articles on Atlantic oysters and their associated fauna (see Wells, 1961, and Wells & Wells, 1961).
References
Korshunova, Tatiana & Alexander Martynov. 2020. Consolidated data on the phylogeny and evolution of the family Tritoniidae (Gastropoda: Nudibranchia) contribute to genera reassessment and clarify the taxonomic status of the neuroscience models Tritonia and Tochuina. PloS ONE 15(11): 47 pp. e0242103. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone. 0242103.
Marcus, Ernst. 1961. Opisthobranchs from North Carolina. The Journal of the Elisha Mitchell Scientific Society 77(2): 141-151.
Valdés, Ángel, Jeff Hamann, David W. Behrens & Anne DuPont. 2006. Caribbean Sea Slugs: A Field Guide to the Opisthobranch Mollusks from the Tropical Northwestern Atlantic. Sea Challengers Natural History Books, Etc., Gig Harbor. Vii + 289 pp.
Wells, Harry W. 1961. The fauna of oyster beds, with special reference to the salinity factor. Ecological Monographs 31(3): 239-266.
Wells, Harry W. & Mary Jane Wells. 1961. Three species of Odostomia from North Carolina, with description of a new species. The Nautilus 74(4): 149–157.
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Mike Ghiselin and Hans at Bahía de los Ángeles, 28 February 1989
